End Times: Human Error Original Soundtrack 1
by Syberina5
Summary: Track 1 in a series of shorts inspired by music. "And the ground's not cold/And if the ground's not cold/Everything is gonna burn./We'll all take turns/I'll get mine, too./This monkey's gone to heaven." -Pixies, Monkey Gone to Heaven


And the ground's not cold  
And if the ground's not cold  
Everything is gonna burn.  
We'll all take turns  
I'll get mine, too.  
This monkey's gone to heaven.

-Pixies, _Monkey Gone to Heaven_

_End Times_

The world had been ending for ever. Literally. The world had been ending since it began, so when the actual end came it wasn't with all the bells and whistles everyone expected. It was like a candle guttering out. It flickered and bobbed, choking in the sea of wax slowly swamping it until one flicker, no different from its many predecessors, ended in an acrid trail of rising smoke.

All the star stuff that had coalesced into this existence remained, a nominal amount of it lost in the heat of the moment, free once again to become stars and planets and galaxies when the time came.

Humanity, had it been given the chance, would have wanted to know exactly _how_ and _why_. Humanity was like that, curious and crude and generally unprepared for the answer.

Especially the simple answers.

The world had ended because it could. Because it was time for it to. Because had to.

The how wasn't global warming or acid rain. It's wasn't nuclear war or that crazy machine a bunch of scientists had created in order to simulate the big bang.

It was humanity.

Human error.

That was the large red stamp on the file of Earth.

And all those people who had no idea that they were in the end times, that life was days away from ending went about it as nearly everyone who is about to die does: totally clueless. They went to work and burned dinner, tried to pay off debt and fought over bath time. Minutiae. Born into a sea of it and wiped out still surrounded by it, having—ultimately—gotten nowhere.

Nothing went wrong and everything went wrong but it went wrong everyday, slowly. Major and minor disasters sprinkled about with tragedies and horrors stirred in liberally. And no one noticed. Because that was humanity. Man heaped misery on man. Nothing was out of the ordinary because it simply was. It was the end of the world, but it was just beginning.

Standing with a coffee cup in one hand and a cold Pop-Tart in the other Connie read the headline of the news paper. "Pacific Oil Spill." Some tanker had been in a storm and drifted close to the Galapagos Islands when the already malfunctioning computer system released a large amount of crude oil into the ocean. Darwin's find was now swimming in black goo. There were pictures of the struggling beasts, of the black water on white beaches, of man invading to clean up the mess and to record it happening.

While tragic for the ecosystem of one small slice of the ocean, Connie really didn't see it affecting her life any. Sure, she'd heard about the evils of the gas-guzzling automotive industry and greenhouse gases, the irreparable harm to the Earth's environment and she'd agreed. Kinda. Because really. But the ocean was enormous, how was that going to affect her?

So she crawled into her SUV, packing in the kids, and, after dropping them at school, hauled ass through the morning freeway traffic to work.

On the way home she would bitch to herself about the price of gas.

Jeff always read the whole paper on Sunday. A divorced man with no kids, no girlfriend, no lawn to mow or car to wash, what else was he going to do on a Sunday except sit in his friendly neighborhood coffee shop reading the _Times_ and trying to pick up a woman so next weekend his Sunday would be a little less boring.

Because he read it every week the local crimes list didn't upset him. It was the same, like all the articles were the same. A list of stick-ups, shootings, robberies, rapes, and most often getaways. But he read it every Sunday.

Just like he read about the School Board Chief's embezzlement and how he'd done it to some small beans county before he'd come to the city.

Just like he read about the politician who had a wife and children and a mistress and a baby.

Just like he read about the celebrities whose fame had died years before them and all they'd ever done.

Just like he read about crashing planes, trains, cars, and stock prices.

Just like he read about the beaten protesters, about the massive lay offs, about the fires, the mudslides, the tsunamis, earthquakes, wars, illnesses, and dire predictions for the future.

Same shit, different story. And frequently not all that different.

So while Jeff was well versed in the happenings of the world, knew more about it than any of the other drones at work, it all just blurred together. One awful thing flowed into the next until all the different categories of awful were stirred together.

Yvonne only ever read the funny section of the paper.

Her family would pick through it. Jean would go for the Arts section, circling in red marker the things he wanted to see but never would; sometimes going as far as to plan the outing with friends but never actually making it to the galleries or concerts, performances. Mama would read the bits about fashion applying them as liberally as the income allowed to her wardrobe and her family's. And about food, new trends and recipes, new restaurants and chefs. She would plan much more successfully sometimes getting Marc to take her to dinner. Sometimes dragging the whole family. Marc read only about football and politics. He insisted they were the same things and to hear the running commentary he could give on the President and the government, the passion and speed, one would believe him.

But everyone would read the front page, the beginnings of what were deemed the most important stories. Yvonne didn't care. They were always so serious and depressing.

She only picked up the paper to laugh. Only watched TV to chuckle, only read books to enjoy.

As she held the page up with the tips of her fingers—she so hated that stubborn ink that rubbed off—she giggled over the antics of a cat, a dog, and a pig.


End file.
